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Saturday, February 10, 2007

Looking through a child's eye (Disney Pixar Cars)


Being a father is a great opportunity to relive childhood. It enables us to look at everyday objects with a new sense of wonder and excitement. My two year old son has been a fan of he "Cars" movie by Disney Pixar. He brings up the Cars DVD, gestures towards the DVD player and fetches the TV and DVD remote, whenever he wants to watch it. He will start tugging at my shirt if I am not paying attention. Once the DVD is put on he watches with rapt attention. As if on cue he laughs loudly when Chick Hicks gives his TV interview and when the birds cameo appears
with a tweeting sound. Generally I am only paying passing attention to him as he watches the movie. One day I began him getting increasingly nervous and tugging my sleeve. The movie was on, so I could not understand what he was wanting. Suddenly he ran inside the house crying and did not come back for a long time. When this happened for the second time, I began to understand what was going on. He was getting scared of Bessie, the road paving machine. While all the other cars have eyes, mouth and in general facial cues, Bessie had none. Must be quite scary for a child.I had to fast forward. But turns out he is scared of Frank as well, so I had to fast forward to the happy parts and then he watched the movie in contentment.
As I play my duties as a father I try to draw from my childhood experiences, about what excited me, what scared me, how I outgrew my fears, how the elders reacted and all. When I was a child, the only place where you could watch something scary was in a movie theater and whenever scary scenes like, hero getting beaten up came, I used to crouch down in the chair and close my eyes and ears, till the hero had gained enough strength and confidence to fight back. But at least the scary experiences were limited to the theater. Home was safe turf. Now the kids are having a hard time with scary things invading home, due to irresponsible parents like me who have brought movies into homes.
I have discovered a lot of scary things, which I had never noticed before. The sound effect at the beginning of Microsoft Train Simulator, The fact that beach sand starts washing away under your feet when a sea wave recedes, any blinking red LED, any scene with monochromatic or desaturated color scheme.
Bringing up a child is sure scary.

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